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Chapter 68 (#ue5a13ebb-45da-5f29-9c88-5e716841f6c5)
Chapter 69 (#u4f3bd193-6ca7-5872-905f-3a67c56c99fc)
Chapter 70 (#u6d5e2384-5f65-538b-a158-36bf7795d748)
Chapter 71 (#u13ceae39-4884-5039-8e3c-686a547a13af)
Chapter 72 (#u3a251911-f1eb-528a-9984-cf44386f0fba)
Chapter 73 (#u3cb75737-71c3-5c8a-be58-f4eaec275c51)
Chapter 74 (#u60c6bd22-ff70-560f-bd5c-0f6d388be3ea)
Chapter 75 (#u4d95e829-0b29-593a-b35d-0d3a3404f88c)
Chapter 76 (#u5a0c07c5-40d0-5f4c-af25-0c249f7b01d7)
Chapter 77 (#u2dab64f2-ac88-576a-a52e-78e50906a9a7)
Chapter 78 (#u6ee1a517-6e06-5194-a113-79a1256dc054)
Chapter 79 (#u2901f4e7-b384-5d6b-a3fe-9055cd341091)
Chapter 80 (#u4bdaa207-aca8-5d3b-80f6-9d8cff6b9211)
Chapter 81 (#ue64f08de-e2f2-55d4-9a94-35778d507b07)
Chapter 82 (#u62f33061-829b-59a8-b06f-f5f121bdfb38)
Chapter 83 (#u42a901d0-92a2-58bb-bd2b-4f8be828fa6a)
Chapter 84 (#u91aec83e-033e-5603-b081-01f4e2927352)
Chapter 85 (#ue36a92bb-d65f-5f59-bd5f-0f406ab706c6)
Chapter 86 (#u5be24e91-1f8c-54a7-86bb-4dffc5d58b1d)
Chapter 87 (#u2d3ca808-a6fe-5ea4-8cd4-9212daab3a7f)
Chapter 88 (#u52cae6b1-8693-5603-8552-bda262c8a802)
Epilogue (#ub80afc3a-3749-5dbf-92a5-28ec161bf0cd)
Acknowledgments (#u3740d1ec-d01f-5489-9123-4adc02c901df)
Keep Reading... (#u9e81144b-7c8f-5a5e-8234-cd7c356cbdc8)
About the Author (#ue0528197-2b5d-5721-a699-c5116fc466b4)
Also by Jilliane Hoffman (#uf6f85724-5f49-5712-90a4-b967c492fdee)
About the Publisher (#uf11e25e5-9df2-51bc-969f-05e6b6a1c69c)
PART ONE (#ud3744b4f-5cf0-5a2a-99b3-fc0bbd143ac6)
The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.
The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference.
The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference.
And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.
Elie Wiesel, U.S. News and World Report, October 27, 1986
1 (#ud3744b4f-5cf0-5a2a-99b3-fc0bbd143ac6)
The rainy night air smelled toxic – burnt and bitter – like a house fire a day after being put out, its charred remains smoldering in puddles full of water and chemicals. The thick taste coated her throat. No matter if she spit or swallowed, there was no getting rid of it.
The girl stumbled through the maze of sugar cane stalks. With no moon, stars or light to guide her it was hard to make out even the hand in front of her face. She was barefoot and the muddy, gloppy soil was laden with chunks of limestone that, when stepped on, felt like she had walked on a hidden land mine because of the glass that was still stuck in her foot. The pain would explode and travel like a lightning rod through her whole body, setting even her teeth on fire. As soon as she could stop running she’d try to feel around and pick the pieces out. But that time wasn’t now. With outstretched hands, she staggered down the row of thick stalks that towered over her small frame, hoping they would brace her should she run into something.
Or someone.
The terrifying thought made her shake. That, and she’d never been so cold before. She’d grown up in Florida. It never got cold here, even when some front blew in from Canada and all the old people and news anchors started yelling it was freezing and that the orange trees were gonna die. But she was completely soaked and the crazy-assed wind from the crazy-assed storm ripped right through her. It raced through the cane stalks making them whistle so piercingly they sounded like they were screaming. She bit her tongue to stop her teeth from chattering.
It was hard not to yell out for help. There could be someone or something out there beyond all this fucking cane. Yards away, maybe. A home. A gas station. A road that led out of here, wherever here was. Somewhere nearby, cane fields had been torched and harvested. That’s what she was smelling and tasting in her throat – burnt sugar cane. Maybe there were people out here. Maybe farmers or migrant workers living in tents or shanties, waiting for the storm to pass and first light to come so they could torch these fields. Maybe someone could hear her, help her, take her in.
Hide her.
But even as she thought it, she realized that was fool thinking. Chances were there weren’t. Chances were she was in the middle of nowhere with no one around for miles. Chances were she was out here on her own and the best thing she could do was to take cover in the stalks until the sun came up and those migrant workers showed up by the truckload. Chances were that the only people who would hear her cries for help were the very men hunting her. The faces of loved ones flashed before her: Sweet baby Ginger who still wanted her bottle at night even though everyone said she was too old for one. Luis. He was a bastard – a jealous, cheating fuck. He’d broken her heart more times than she could count. Oh God, how she loved him. Always had, always would. Mami, Papi, Abu, Cindy, Alonzo, Quina Mae. She pushed the faces out of her head. To think of them meant she was giving up and saying her mental goodbyes.
No! No! Pull yourself together!
She wiped her eyes and sucked in the sobs. Those men were out there. They would hear her whimpers and hone in on them like vultures listening for the struggling breaths of a dying creature. Right now they were circling the fields she was lost in, trying to GPS her location, swoop in and pick over what was left of her. She tried to focus instead on the scent of pine. Somewhere beyond the stench of wet, burnt cane was the crisp smell of slash pine trees. It was the scent of hope. She was going to make her way toward that. No more mental goodbyes: she was a survivor. So far she had made it farther than the others.
She was still alive.
The cane stalks attacked her face and hands like accomplices as she forced her way through them. Once she hit the clearing where the cane had been burned she could run. Damn the fear and the pain in her foot, she’d run. Of course, she would be exposed in a clearing. The tears started again.
Maybe they were waiting for her to do just that, to spare them the trouble of ferreting her out. Those men – those Crazies – they likely knew these fields. That’s why they’d brought her here. They knew which ways led in, which ways led out. And that place – that horrible, horrible place they had taken her to. It was surrounded by so much cane, stalks had started to grow inside.
You can’t stay here. Choose!What would be worse? Hiding in a cane field, only to be found and taken back to … that place? Or making a run for it? Making a run for one of those homes that might be out there beyond the stalks?
Better to run. Better to go down fighting. Luis would tell her that, for sure. God, she wished he were here. He would cut those motherfuckers into a million little pieces and then force-feed them to each—
‘Here, kitty, kitty.’
Her heart stopped. He was behind her. He was gaining on her. Her head darted around. Where the hell was he? She dropped to her hands and knees, crawling into the stalks. She felt a searing pain shoot up her leg, the one with the glass in it. She reached down and felt the open flap of skin on her heel, the warmth of her own blood as it ran out through her fingers. The cane stalks were razor sharp. She bit into her hand and tried to shake off the pain. The bad thoughts returned. The faces of her family reappeared.
At least this way the police will know I was here. They’ll see all the blood and test it and know I was here. I won’t have just disappeared. No one will think I left town, that I ran away from Ginger …
But even as she thought it, she knew it was ridiculous. She could completely bleed out in this field and no one would ever know she’d been here, crawling in the dark, trying to hide from her killers. The rain would wash it all away. The workers who tended these fields would step on her grave and, if the Crazies didn’t leave her body where they killed her, no one would ever know. And if they didn’t kill her here, if they dragged her away to that place to do all the horrible things they had promised to do to her, there would be nothing left in this spot to find at all. Or they could leave her here, chopped into bits and pieces and sprinkled all over, like seasoning, knowing that these fields would soon be incinerated. After the inferno there would be nothing left to find but ash. If the migrants ever did stumble on what remained of her, and if crime scene people like the ones in CSI could actually identify ash and bone fragments, then maybe, just maybe, some detective might try and come out here one day and piece together her final moments. He might try to figure out exactly what had happened here. She bit harder into her hand. But that was impossible. Because no one could ever imagine the moment she was in right now. The horror of it was unimaginable.
‘You know why the dog chases the cat?’
He was feet away. She could hear him even over the screaming of the cane stalks. He knew she could hear him, too – he was yelling, but his swampy Southern voice was calm.
Was she crawling toward him or away from him?
‘’Cause it runs. If the cat don’t run, then the dog don’t chase. The cat and dog – they can be friends, darlin’. But if that cat, well, if she runs …’ His voice trailed off. ‘See, all you gonna do, darlin’, is piss off the fucking dog – get him all tired and shit. So come on out, kitty, before you piss me off. It’s just gonna hurt more, bitch.’
The light sliced through the stalks – up, down, over, across. She stopped crawling and tucked herself into a tight, tight ball.
‘Maybe that cat’s hiding right now. Praying for morning and some Hondurans to come save her.’
The light crossed over to the row directly across from her. She cast her eyes to the ground, so the light wouldn’t catch on the whites of her eyes. In her fist she clenched the stalk.
‘That would be fool thinking.’
His work boots squished in the mud.
‘Dogs have a great sense of smell. There ain’t nowhere that cat can hide, ’cause that dog can smell pussy. Oh yeah. And when that dog finds her, well, he’s gonna tear her limb from limb for making him work so hard.’ He started to chuckle. It bloomed into a frenzied, maniacal laugh.
She put her hands over her ears.
‘You seen her yet?’ It was another voice. It was the second Crazy, speaking over a walkie-talkie.
‘Not yet, brother,’ replied the swamp voice. ‘But this here’s the fun part. This is when we get to find her and teach her why it wasn’t a smart move to leave us none. Whoo-wee, we’re gonna have us a good time!’
She covered her mouth so he wouldn’t see her breath. A loud rumble of thunder sounded.
‘Go over by the tractor,’ said the swamp voice into the walkie-talkie. ‘Make sure she don’t get past that and onto the road. We’re fucked if we lose her to the road.’
Another rumble. She looked up at the sky. Please, please, please – no lightning. It’ll light up this field like the second coming of Christ …
The swamp-voiced Crazy sniffed at the air. ‘But I’m telling ya, I don’t think she’s got that far, ’cause there’s pussy around here somewhere.’
Hot tears ran down her filthy face. There were so many things left to do in life. So many times she’d wished she could start over, because she’d screwed up so many times. Always the big disappointment.
‘Dino trackers still find dino footprints, stuck there in mud. Miiillllions of years old …’
She rocked back and forth, her body tucked into a tight ball, her hands over her ears. Every day she’d tell herself she’d turn her life around – tomorrow. Tomorrow always came and went. Now she knew she would do it. For Ginger, who deserved a better momma. For her own mom, who worried so much about the way she lived her life. If she ever saw another tomorrow …
The light was right in front of her, now, inches from her foot, sporadically slicing through the stalks like the beams of a searchlight would dissect the night sky at the club where she danced. ‘How long you think a footprint stays ’round, darlin’, before rain runs it off?’It slithered off into the cane, brushing her jeans. The work boots plodded away. Squish. Squish. Squish.
Then he turned, ran back real quick, dropped to his knees, and stuck the flashlight in her face. ‘Hey there bitch!’ he cooed. ‘I got her!’ he yelled out triumphantly.
Not yet. There was still tomorrow. She threw a fistful of mud and rock at his face and stuck the cane into his eyes. When he yelped in surprise, she leapt up and kicked him in the face as hard as she could. She wished she were wearing her boots. Those would’ve taken out a few teeth. Then she could stomp on his ugly cracker head with her stilettos and pop those bloodshot, lecherous eyes. But they’d taken her boots.
He fell to the ground and she kicked him in the face two more times before bolting into the stalks.
‘Bitch!’ he howled.
The clearing was up ahead, she could feel it. The pine was strong. There was still hope. And then, like a miracle, lightning lit the sky, illuminating the path that had been cut through the cane stalks. Jesus had turned on the lights at the right moment and showed her the way out.
‘She’s on the run!’ she heard the swamp-voiced Crazy scream. ‘Fuck me, motherfucker, she stuck me! I can’t see nothing! You better get the car! Don’t let her get into town!’
2 (#ud3744b4f-5cf0-5a2a-99b3-fc0bbd143ac6)
Faith Saunders felt her eyelids start to slip closed and she slapped herself hard across the cheek. Then she lowered the SUV’s window and stuck her face out into the rain. She had to stay awake. She had to. It was midnight and she still had a ways to go. Stopping was not an option. Not out here. There was no place to stop.
She dried her face with the beach towel she’d found in the back of the Explorer before wiping the fog from the inside of the windshield. On top of all that had gone wrong tonight – and there was plenty – the AC and defroster had stopped working, thanks to the humungous puddle, a.k.a. lake, she hadn’t seen when she tore out of her sister’s development back in Sebring. She sat up straight, stretched her back and leaned on the steering wheel, trying to concentrate through the exhaustion and pounding headache that had been building behind her eyes. Outside it looked the same as it had since she’d left Charity’s – wet and flat and black. Endlessly black. It had been at least a half-hour since she’d seen another car on the road.
On its way to wreak havoc on Texas, late-season Tropical Storm Octavius had stalled over a sizable chunk of the Sunshine State, making life miserable for the past two days for everyone in Central and South Florida. Faith had grown up in Miami, and in her thirty-two years she’d seen her share of bad weather and hurricanes – usually they blew in, took down a few trees and power lines and blew out. But Octavius wasn’t playing by the script: the storm was expected to continue thrashing the state with rain and fifty-mile-an-hour wind gusts for at least one more day. Most people were smart and had heeded warnings to stay indoors and off the roads.
Most people.
Faith chewed on her lip. She wasn’t sure she was lost, she just didn’t know exactly where she was. She was supposed to be on State Road 441, only this didn’t look like the 441 she’d taken up to her sister’s that afternoon. Of course, she’d driven up to Charity’s in the daylight, and with no streetlights, gas stations, restaurants, motels or landmarks to help guide her, everything looked different in the dark. Out here there was nothing but acre after acre of farmland and for the last umpteen miles, stretches of sugar cane fields, their bushy, imposing stalks looming menacingly over both sides of the roadway. This was Central Florida, and outside the urban vortex of Orlando and the 140,000-room hotelopolis of Disney, Universal and SeaWorld, the middle of the state didn’t offer much more than a handful of small towns, rural farmland, Lake Okeechobee and the Everglades. If you were headed south, like she was, it wasn’t until you hit Palm Beach County that you’d start to see life and lights and buildings taller than two stories. The further south and east, the brighter the lights and taller the buildings until you finally hit the neon glow and towering skyscrapers of Miami, where there were sure to be bars open and people out and about, even at midnight and even in a tropical storm. But Faith wasn’t in Miami. She was far from it, still way out somewhere in the boonies, trying to get home, trying to stay awake, and trying to forget all the horrible reasons why she was out here on such a horrible night in the first place.
A blinding streak of lightning cut across the sky right in front of her and she sucked in a breath. Her eyes darted to the rearview, to where Maggie, her four-year-old, was asleep in her booster, a thumb in her mouth, her other hand clutching a well-worn, stuffed Eeyore. Faith counted off the seconds in her head. When the boom of thunder came, it was so loud and so intense that she could actually feel it roll through the car. She stiffened, staring at the mirror, bracing for the fallout. Having had to unexpectedly leave her cousins’ house had triggered one of Maggie’s inconsolable, crazy tantrums and she’d spent the first forty-five minutes of the drive home screaming, crying, and kicking at the back of the passenger seat, finally falling asleep from pure exhaustion. Faith watched as she sucked her thumb harder, her tiny, slender fingers clutching at her freckled nose, her long blonde eyelashes fluttering, threatening to pop open.
She carefully exhaled the breath she’d been holding, reached behind her with one hand and gently rubbed Maggie’s exposed bony knee. The two-sizes-too-big pink cowboy boot that had been precariously dangling off the edge of her toes fell to the floorboard next to its mate. ‘Cha-Cha’, the threadbare crocheted receiving blanket that Maggie never left home without, had slipped down the side of her car seat. Stretching her free hand, Faith found it on the floor and tried to toss it over Maggie’s bare feet. It landed instead on her head, completely missing the bottom half of her body and covering her face. Not exactly what she’d intended, but perhaps better, she thought as another jagged streak of lightning lit the sky, so frighteningly close you could almost touch it. Cha-Cha would help mute the thunderclaps and block the wicked flashes that lit the car up like a Christmas tree.
Faith popped the two Advil she’d found in her glove compartment and downed them with a slug of ice-cold Racetrak coffee left over from the afternoon drive up to her sister’s. Had she really made this same drive only, what? Ten hours ago? She sighed and looked again at the shrouded tiny figure in the back seat as another round of thunder rocked the car. Even though the fight with Charity wasn’t Faith’s fault – and it certainly wasn’t how she’d envisioned her sister’s birthday party ending – she was going to have to make it up to Maggie for the way they’d had to leave tonight, rushing out in the rain with all those strangers watching, her cousins witnessing the mother of all breakdowns happen live from their bedroom window. She’d take her to a movie, or skating at Incredible Ice tomorrow. Or maybe she’d let her stay home from St Andrews and they’d bake cookies; Maggie would’ve missed school anyway if they’d stayed up in Sebring as originally planned. God knows that, after what had happened tonight, Faith could use a Mental Health Day herself.
The memory made her heart hurt. No matter how much she wanted to forget, her thoughts kept returning to her sister’s kitchen, to the crowd of gaping, snickering strangers gathered around the makeshift bar at the dinette table watching the family drama unfold as if it was part of the evening’s entertainment. Charity had chosen the path she’d chosen in life and the man she’d chosen to walk it with, and it was time for Faith to accept that and stop trying to fix her little sister’s problems, because she obviously didn’t want them fixed. For years, everyone had been blaming Charity’s shortcomings on her idiot sloth of a husband, Nick, but maybe it was time to place that blame where it really belonged. And tonight … well, tonight was the last straw. Angry tears slipped down her cheeks.
Even cold, bad coffee couldn’t get rid of the icky-sweet taste of the hurricanes that Nick had insisted she try when the night was young and the party was in full swing and all was going well. The back of her throat still felt like it was coated in Hawaiian-Punch-flavored wallpaper paste. She looked over longingly at the open glove compartment where she’d found the Advil. Inside, under a pile of napkins, was a stale half-pack of Marlboro Lights. Faith had picked up the habit back in high school, and had been trying to drop it ever since college. It had taken a bout of morning sickness to get her to finally quit the first time. She’d successfully stayed off the sticks for four years, but then came the phone call that changed everything last year and the first thing she’d picked up after she’d hung up was a Marlboro. It was like welcoming home an old friend, something that she definitely needed at the time. Not so much as a tickle of disapproval had sounded from her throat, and in no time she was back on a pack a day. Quitting this time around was proving much more difficult, though, and getting pregnant again to help her try and kick the habit wasn’t an option she was ready to consider.
She reached over and slammed the glove compartment shut. No matter how much she needed an old friend right now, she couldn’t go there. Not with Maggie in the car. Nope. Jarrod, Faith’s husband, had no idea she was still trying to quit, and Maggie could never know she ever smoked. She’d be nominated for Bad Mother of the Year if she lit up with her young daughter’s clean lungs two feet away. She anxiously nibbled on a cuticle instead.
The rain started to come down harder and Faith slowed to twenty. She looked at the clock. In six minutes, Charity would be turning the big 3-0. What was she doing at this very moment to celebrate? Was she passed out on the couch? Were Nick’s stupid friends still over? Was she having wild birthday sex? That thought made her want to gag. Was she even the least bit upset over how Faith had left?
Originally, the plan had been for Faith to take Charity and her three kids – eleven-year-old Kamilla, five-year-old Kourtney and two-year-old Kaelyn – up to Disney next weekend, along with Maggie, to celebrate Charity’s thirtieth. No husbands – just the six girls and Mickey Mouse living it up in the land where everyone’s always happy. Faith had booked two rooms at the Walt Disney World Dolphin Resort well in advance. Ironically, the reservation had to be cancelled by midnight tomorrow – the last minute of Charity’s actual birthday – or Faith would have to forfeit her deposit. Of course she’d have to cancel, she thought as she wiped away more tears. There was no way things would be right between them by Friday. They might never be right again.
After ten years of marriage, maybe Nick had wanted to finally show that he cared. Maybe he’d wanted to one-up Faith’s Disney trip. Or maybe throwing Charity a party was simply a good excuse for him to have a good time with his friends since Charity didn’t have many that he hadn’t slept with. Whatever his reasoning, Nick ‘Big Mitts’ Lavecki, the man who had forgotten his wife’s birthday more often than he had remembered it, had decided to throw Charity a last-minute surprise party. Last minute, as in he’d told Faith about it this morning.
‘Tonight, Nick?’ Faith had looked at the clock above the fireplace in her family room, which was in Parkland, a good two hundred miles from where her sister lived in Sebring. It was ten thirty on Sunday morning.
‘Nothing fancy. A bunch of friends, ya know, some beer, food from Costco, like those platters of wieners and chicken nuggets, that sort of crap, and ya know, a cake. I’m gonna get that at Costco, too. A chocolate cake. They can write “Happy Birthday Ya Old Bag” on it.’ He laughed. ‘Maybe they can put, like, a wheelchair decoration on the frosting or something.’
Faith cringed. ‘Really, Nick?’
‘No! I’m only fucking with you, Faithey. But I am taking the kids so they can pick out black balloons and Over the Hill plates.’ He laughed again. ‘Char will get a kick out of that.’
Faith had looked out her kitchen window at the toppled lawn umbrella and the chaise longue cushion that had blown into the pool that was close to overflowing. Jarrod had cocked his head at her from across the table and mouthed What? She shook her head at him. ‘The weather’s pretty nasty, Nick.’
‘It’s not so bad up here. Everyone says they’re coming anyway.’
